‘Twilight’ Jam Sessions With RPattz

Long remembers the anonymous Pattinson from his Soho, London period when the still-struggling actor was doing his best to write great songs with his mates—like Bobby and Marcus Foster—until all hours of the morning.

“Robert lived in a dingy, horrible, little flat in Soho near Denmark Street,” Long recalls to Celebuzz. “We used to hang out and play music until five in the morning, really going for it. Drinking and all that stuff.”

“We only ate pizza for like two months. We ballooned on weight,” Long recalls. “But it probably helped the vampire look. I know I was really pale.”

“It was really chilled-out. Watching films, listening to music and writing.”

Chilled-out except for the danger element, since the group also hung out on the steeply pitched building rooftop. “We used to write our songs on the roof. It was Mary Poppins high up,” says Long. “We were on ledges eating pizza. Our music was drowned out by taxis and buses.”

“Looking back now it is funny how dangerous it was.”

Long says he wasn’t truly even aware Pattinson was an actor after meeting him at an open-mic night. “I thought he was a musician like myself just struggling through. A student like me,” Long says. “I didn’t know he was an actor.”

“Twilight” comes

As the friendship grew, the acting connections worked out well for all the musicians when Pattinson returned to London after shooting Twilight. Long and Foster played a song they had written called “Let Me Sign” in Pattinson’s apartment. It was nothing serious. “We were kind of just mucking around with it,” says Long.

“(Robert) thought the song was really cool and took it to L.A.,” Long recalls. “Before I knew it, it was going to be used in the film.”

Although Long and Foster had written a “country” song about love, the lyrics about signing away one’s soul to a woman lent themselves perfectly to undead love (for example, “Damned by the light coming out of her eyes”). That was not the intention going in, Long insists. “But if I tried to write a vampire song, I could not have done it as well as that.”

The song was famously performed by Pattinson in the film. Long was able to see the emotional impact first-hand when he heard the song at the London Twilight premiere. “Everyone was crying during the song,” he says. “I feel like it’s his song now. He’s incredible at interpreting people’s work.”

The unexpected blessing of the Twilight success has led to Long’s greater introduction to the global music scene and his first musical tour in the US next month (as well a planned US tour for the summer).

But he still thinks fondly of the Pattinson Soho days. Long reflected on them again, when he shot a video for his new song “Left To Lie” atop a Soho roof. “All the memories came flooding back at that time,” says Long.